If you are a federal employee household, like we are, the potential government shutdown is probably also on your mind. Thanks to a number of children (and not the good kind, but those cavechildren you see in public, climbing furniture, eating paste, and pulling hair out of baby dolls' heads) that some people in this country saw fit to elect as their distinguished representatives, our debt ceiling and the world economy are being held hostage by House Republicans. I can't go on about it because I get all rage-y when I think about their callousness for 1.2 million federal employees' families who, wonder of all wonders, might need something as silly as a paycheck to help them subsist.

Well, stressful times call for relaxing recipes. I'm thinking easy marination, one-pot-dishes, and unattended oven time that also happens to heat your home as the fall chill approaches in the evening. Bonus points for ones that happen to use ingredients you already have in your fridge, since we're talking about saving money after all, and are easily amenable to your fridge's quirky constitution instead of mine. Enter my Asian interpretation of roasted chicken and root vegetables.

Spicy Miso Chicken Thighs

• 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs
• 2 tablespoon garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoon ginger, minced
• 3 tablespoons miso paste
• 1 lemon, zested
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon sesame chili oil
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon sambal oelek
• 1 pound carrots
• sea salt

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Combine the garlic, ginger, miso, lemon zest, vegetable oil, sesame chili oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, and sambal oelek and marinate the chicken thighs in the mixture for at least an hour, but preferably overnight.

Peel the carrots, slice them on the bias, and toss them with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and some sea salt. Spread them out on the bottom of a baking dish and top with the chicken.

Bake for 30 minutes, flipping chicken once halfway through the cooking time. Broiling for 3-4 minutes is optional to brown the thighs. Let the chicken rest for 5 minutes and then serve it up.

If you look really closely, you can see 1.2 million workers giving the bird to the House GOP.

A few years ago, while menu-tasting for our wedding in the DC metro area, I tasted what continues to be my favorite appetizer, hands down: crispy palak (spinach) chaat. I won't mention the name of the Indian restaurant in the Virginia suburbs, despite the wondrousness they caused in my mouth, because they were completely unethical and I want no part in driving business towards their establishment. But once every few months my mind wanders back to that tasting and I find myself involuntarily smacking my lips in memory of the light, crispy, almost airy quality of the starter. It doesn't hurt that the following conversation occurred at the table when the dish was introduced, causing my sister to almost lose her shit on a complete stranger, when it's hard enough to convince her to accompany us to Indian restaurants for exactly this reason:

Manager: And this is our palak chaat.

Me: Does this have any gram flour in it? My sister (sitting across from me) is deathly allergic to it, if so.

Manager: Absolutely no gram flour.

Me: Really? Because it looks like it's been slightly battered in it.

Manager: Nope. No gram flour whatsoever.

Me: (making the rest of the table uncomfortable at this point) Are you absolutely sure? Because my sister will have an awful allergic reaction to this dish if it even has as much as a dusting of besan (gram flour). 

Manager: Oh, there is a LOT of besan in it.

In any case, the dish was delicious but we decided we couldn't reliably serve it at the wedding because we needed practical starters that could withstand delays and crowds. One of the reasons this dish was truly spectacular was because its light crunch necessitated the intimacy of making it "to order"--something that would be difficult at our three hundred person affair.

Once again, my favorite restaurant in the district doesn't disappoint, as it is also famous for the same dish (albeit made differently by flash frying entire leaves of baby spinach instead of the thin ribbons of the leafy green I tasted at The Restaurant That Shall Not Be Named). I haven't actually tasted it at Rasika, however, since I've only been with my sister and I usually try to avoid choosing dishes that will send her into severe anaphylactic shock (see above). But the interwebs are rife with diners who have tasted the starter at Rasika and are haunted months, if not years, later, desperately trying to copycat the recipe in their own kitchens.

Fast forward a few years from the first time I tasted this dish to this past week when I brought a new member of the family into our home. I bought a two pound bag of kale at the store, thinking--hey, I love kale, I haven't really cooked with it much in the past few months, and I always feel like greens cook down into oblivion, so why not go big with the large bag? HAVE YOU EVER SEEN TWO POUNDS OF TIGHTLY PACKED KALE? I seriously think Desmond would take up less room in our fridge. This bag is endless and it does not cook down. I have already made five dishes with it and it looks like I haven't even made a dent. 

Not that I'm complaining--kale is a sought-after superfood and has really been pretty trendy in the U.S. (if not France, as a NYT piece sure to enrage fellow freelancers explained this weekend). I had it at Craft a few months ago, seemingly sauted with onions in nothing but a bit of rice wine and butter. It's hearty and healthy--what's not to love?

As I was staring in wonder at this bag this past weekend, I saw some "tips" (essentially on how to get rid of this ridiculous amount of greens, as though they knew) for helpful ways to use kale. One of them suggested replacing it for any recipe that calls for spinach. [note: this is not true when it comes to raw spinach salads, since raw kale really needs acidity to soften it up--rice wine vinegar or soy works nicely.] 

Spinach! Palak Chaat! As anyone who's made kale chips knows, that delicate, light crunch is pretty easy to obtain with this green. So I set about making my own "palak" chaat for some friends who were coming over for dinner. Owing to the deep fryer incident of 2009, I chose to avoid this horrendous appliance in favor of baking the crispy chaat--just as I would for kale chips.

Crispy "Palak" Chaat

• five cups of kale, ripped off the stem and ribboned
• quarter cup gram flour (besan)
• three tablespoons rice flour
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• sea salt, to taste
• olive oil 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Massage or spray the kale with olive oil. Spread it out in an even layer on a wire rack over baking sheets, trying to avoid as much overlap as possible. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a sifter and sift over the kale.

Place the sheets in the oven on the lowest rack possible for about 10-12 minutes, stirring a bit once in the middle to ensure that all of the kale crisps evenly. The kale is ready when it is crispy to touch and the light appearance of the flour has mostly disappeared. 

Plate immediately and top with a mixture (to taste) of yoghurt, tamarind paste and pureed roasted garlic. Additional chopped tomatoes, onions and cilantro are optional. 

Don't hold your breath for ramen burgers to hit the district

Today I'm sharing a recipe that my sister mastered: the coveted ramen burger, the hipster dish still noticeably absent on the district's food scene, despite having already traveled from its hometown Brooklyn all the way out west to California, and even back again. My sister just moved from the district up to the center of foodie fads, New York City, and since she a) is a broke medical student, b) is a recently self-trained excellent cook, and c) has the eating habits of a six year old you would imagine living in a fraternity house, she immediately decided to make the ramen burger in her own kitchen.

DC gets a bad rap when it comes to food, and while I'll be the first to defend its growing culinary options, it does seem like fads hit us late and stay long enough to die a slow, painful death. Why, for example, are cupcakes still so damn popular? I like them just fine, but perhaps I overdosed because they were ALWAYS around my old office--the end of staff meetings, birthdays, anniversaries... by the end I swear it felt like Mondays and Wednesdays just for the hell of it. And, call me old fashioned, but I'd actually like my mini-cakes to cost less than, well, cakes. 

I digress. Point is, the ramen burger isn't even served up at the district's ramen Mecca, Toki Underground yet. And this is doing nothing to ameliorate the severe foodie insecurity Washingtonians feel towards their northern counterparts. If you don't believe me, just google "Where can I get NY-style pizza in DC?" and get back to me after you spend the next three days wading through the results. [Incidentally, as someone who has scoured through all of the hits more than once, and spent a good deal of time traveling around the city testing the advice out, a gift from me to you: Italian Pizza Kitchen (either their Van Ness or Woodley Park location). Get their thin crust, with extra sauce. It's smaller than a New York slice, but otherwise the basics are there. You're welcome.] 

The ramen burger was originally created by New York's noodle master, Keizo Shimamoto, at Brooklyn's Smorgasburg. This self-described "food flea market" hits two locations on the weekends, DUMBO and Williamsburg, to serve up some great hipster flare. And the burger is no exception. It is made exactly as it sounds--a burger pattie sandwiched between buns made out of ramen. The ramen crisps up to give a nice crunch to the bun on the outside, but allows noodles to stay soft, warm and crumbly on the inside. You can get creative with the seasoning of the buns, burger and sauce, but my sister tried to stay true to Shimamoto's "special sauce." Here's her take on the authentic RB:

The Ramen Burger

makes 6-8 servings

Buns 

• 2 packets ramen noodles
• 1 packet of ramen noodle seasoning packet
• 1 large egg
• butter, for searing

Cook two packets worth of ramen noodles in boiling water and then drain all the water. Add only one packet of the chicken flavoring for two packages of noodles, or the buns will be too salty.  Let cool, then add one large egg to noodles and stir to make sure all noodles are coated evenly.  Divide the noodles into 6-8 piles. Add one pile to a ramekin or a bowl, and cover with saran wrap. Use another bowl to flatten into a flat disc, then pop out the ramen disc, cover it fully in saran wrap, and put it in freezer for 20 minutes. Repeat for all 6-8 buns. After 20 minutes, sear ramen buns on a greased pan until golden brown on each side.

Burgers

• 2 pounds of ground beef (80/20 fat composition works well to retain moisture in patties, but it's really up to you)
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 tablespoons fresh garlic
• 2 tablespoons fresh ginger
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• 1 packet of ramen noodle seasoning packet
• 2 chilies, diced

While the buns are in the freezer, prepare your patties. Combine the ground beef, onion, ginger, garlic, cheese, ramen noodle seasoning packet and chilies. Shape into patties and sear on a stovetop or grill, reserving some drippings if possible. 

Sauce

• 1 teaspoon sri racha
• 1 teaspoon spicy brown mustard
• 1 teaspoon oyster sauce
• 1 teaspoon teriyaki sauce
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• some leftover drippings from searing the burgers

Combine sauce ingredients with some of the drippings from searing the burgers and mix well. Adjust sauce ingredients to taste. Layer fresh arugula on the bottom ramen bun, place the burger on top, lather with the sauce, and top with the second bun. 

Got crabs?

A few months ago I stumbled upon one of the best dining establishments in the district: Hot N Juicy. That's right-- that place nestled in the strip of not-so-great restaurants along Connecticut Avenue in Woodley Park, that place where people who want to gorge on crawfish go, that place with plastic tablecloths and tin buckets on the tables.

Forget for a moment that I *am* that person who will go somewhere specifically for the crawfish (have you been to Ghost Street in Beijing, where you can have hot pots and buckets of crawfish at four in the morning?). More importantly to me, Hot N Juicy has CRABS--blue, dungeness, snow, yum.

Even with crabs on the menu it takes some cajoling to get me to sit down at one of these places, given that the crabs are so much more expensive than the crabs you can get fresh and by the bushel down at the southwest waterfront wharf. And the regional Old Bay seasoning is nice, don't get me wrong, but sometimes you want your crabs simmering in a pot of juicy sauce. My community in India calls our variation khadkhale (the best example of onomatopoeia I've ever heard, named for the spitter spatter the frying garlic makes as it hits the hot oil and spices in a pan). My family will pick apart dozens of khadkhale chimboree (crabs) for hours upon hours, until the table is completely covered in delicate opaque membranes and broken shells. Bombay-folk know how to work over their seafood.

But when we moved to this area, the ease and convenience of Old Bay smothered freshly steamed bushels started to replace the hard work involved in a making a chimboree curry from scratch (no judging, Mom!). So you can imagine my heart's delight when I met up with some friends to try Hot N Juicy for the first time and discovered that they have their own khadkhale! They use a cajun spice, but it's the same, unmistakable blend of garlic, oil, and spices. They have five flavors--Lousiana Style, Juicy Cajun, Garlic Butter, Lemon Pepper, and, my favorite, the Hot N Juicy Special. I've tried them all, and you should too.

The aesthetic that matters here is taste, so if you're looking for white linen tablecloths you should move on. In fact, the crabs/crawfish/shrimp are delightfully served in plastic bags so you get plenty of the sauce and don't forget to order a side of rice or rolls to sop it all up! The best part is that utensils are on special order, so eating the rice, sauce and crabs by hand reminds me even more of our family dinners. 

DC carousels

I've always been somewhat obsessed with carousels. The shellacked animals, the strung lightbulbs, the mesmerizing carnival music. And now that I have a little person in my life who still can't quite climb all over a jungle gym but has, quite frankly, mastered the art of sitting, these are perfect weekend destinations. Lucky for me, the DC metro area is chock-full of some beautiful, historic, refurbished carousels that cost next to nothing to ride.

The National Zoo has the Speedwell Conservation Carousel, with 58 different species to ride. The Smithsonian Carousel sits on the Mall, with some of the best people/tourist-watching views around. And Clemyjontri Park has one as the epicenter of its playground (though I can't vouch for anything but how adorable it is, since the operator is not one of those souls who would wait twenty seconds to start the last ride of the day for a mother running full speed for the carousel-entrance with her twenty-one pound boss on her hip in the 95 degree heat). 

But I think one of the more hidden gems in this area is Glen Echo Park's carousel.

After its inception in 1891 as a National Chautauqua Assembly, which taught the sciences, art, languages and literature, GEP became a full-fledged amusement park in the early 1900s. After a successful sit-in by student civil rights activists in 1963, the park ended its policy of segregation in 1964 until it ultimately shut down in 1968. In 1971 the federal government obtained the land, and the National Park Service tried to collaborate with local arts organizations to return to its original Chautauqua spirit. Today it's managed by the Glen Echo Partnership for Arts and Culture and hosts various classes, from pottery to calligraphy to glass blowing. 

It's hard to wander around the grounds and not feel as though you've stepped out of a time machine into the past. For starters, the park's buildings are all charmingly Art Deco, from the cafe signs to the first aid clinic.



But then there are the children squealing in delight on the playground, against the backdrop of carousel music that literally comes out of a restored organ.  Seriously, look at this organ. It's a Wurlitzer Style 165 Military Band Organ, which sounds full of gravitas, but all I could think of the entire time watching it play was that eery boardwalk where Zoltar the fortune telling machine made David Moscow turn into Tom Hanks overnight.

Anyway, one of the old centerpieces of the park that they haven't restored is the bumper cars arcade under an open-air pavilion. Bumper cars! You may be able to take the girl out of Jersey, but you can't take the Jersey out of the girl. Who do we need to talk to to get this feature reinstalled at Glen Echo? Chris Christie himself?

Union Market

Do you ever feel like you never have time to actually take advantage of where you live? In the district, it's common to hear transplants to the city who now call it home express regret that they don't take advantage of the Smithsonian's (free!) museum system. I'll be the first one to admit that it's fantastic to be able to walk down the street and through the National Zoo to see one ape or a couple of elephants and then beeline home without feeling like you need to get your money's worth. Seems like a no-brainer. DC does museums well--people travel across the country to see them, set among regal, marble monuments with waterfront views. 

The food scene, however, is less known and this is a shame. There are new young restauranteurs emerging throughout the city and some of them are committing to the renewal of district neighborhoods. At the heart of one such neighborhood is Union Market. 

The Union Terminal Market opened in 1931, with airy indoor stalls for 700 vendors and remained open to the public six days a week. But in 1962, the district banned the outdoor sale of eggs and meat, so Union took some time, regrouped and eventually opened again in 1967 as a new indoor market. Unfortunately, merchants began to leave the area in the 1980s as this industrial space started to show wear and tear. 

But today Union Market is back and it's trying to be an engine of entrepreneurial spirit and economic growth. The bricks are no longer crumbling--they're painted! And the pipes are no longer rusty--they're shiny (or also painted--come to think, is there anything a nice thick coat of white paint can't make look all industrial-chic?)!

If you're local to DC, go here as soon as you can. There are delicious food vendors, not-too-tony brunch counters, farmers' market produce, and spacious halls were children can be children without annoying the dining crowds. 

Cordial will let you taste wine, 12-3pm on both Saturdays and Sundays. Free wine!

Food trucks will feed you outdoors.

Why I'm glad I'm not a panda

The district is elated over the birth of its newest panda resident, a cub born yesterday to the National Zoo's female giant panda, Mei Xiang. This new cub reminds us of Mei Xiang's loss back in September, when she gave birth to a four ounce cub that died only six days later, due to underdeveloped lungs that led to lung problems. But this baby is looking healthy, so let's hope everything goes well.

I'm not going to pretend that I've ever known much about the animal kingdom, except learning far too late in life from my friend Robyn that you should avoid (not seek, as I thought) eye contact with animals that seem hostile. But the more I read about Mei Xiang's planned pregnancy, birth, and post-birth treatment, the horror grows.

Considering child care

Alissa Quart has a piece in The New York Times today that looks at the financial burden, and often impossibility, of child care on American families. Given that one of my chapters tackles exactly this topic, it piqued my interest. Why would a book on the politics of pregnancy discuss post-birth child care? Because we put our son on a daycare waitlist five months into our pregnancy—twenty months later, our number (a pessimistic 35) has not budged.

If parents are lucky enough to gain admission for their children, Quart discusses the crushing costs. Citing research from University of Massachusetts at Amherst sociologist Joya Misra, she writes that the cost of center-based day care surpasses one year of tuition at a public college in thirty-five states, as well as DC. 

But it's not only the price tag that has parents in despair. Despite resounding evidence that investing in young children’s care reaps huge social benefits, the United States is currently suffering from a severe scarcity of decent day care facilities.  A survey conducted by the National Institute Child Health Development deemed only ten percent of facilities to be “high-care” nationwide and a recent cover story for The New Republic by Jonathan Cohn described the overall quality of day care in our country as “wildly uneven and barely monitored, and, at the lower end, Dickensian.” 

An expose like this, on the dismal state of American child care, surfaces once every year or so. In general, comparisons are made to other industrialized nations, where states invest heavily in quality child care facilities and parents are even offered tax incentives if they stay home to take care of their own children, given that it is considered to save the state a huge sum of money. 

Pamela Druckerman also discusses the American day care dilemma in her comparison between parenting in France and the United States, Bringing Up Bebe. As an American expat in Paris, she compares the quality of care that her first daughter receives from state run crèches with day care back home in the States. 

At least half of any crèche’s workers, Druckerman writes, must pass rigorous tests in reasoning, reading comprehension, math, human biology, and psychological reasoning. Another quarter must have degrees in health, leisure or social work.

But what really wins Druckerman over with her own daughter’s experience in the crèche is its dining experience. Again, the rumored four course meal: “a cold vegetable starter, a main dish with a side of grains or cooked vegetables, a different cheese each day; and a dessert of fresh fruit or fruit puree.” Lunch is prepared by an in-house cook from scratch each day. Soon Druckerman admits to thinking of her daughters’ caregivers as the “Rhodes Scholars of baby care.”

The first day cares were established during the Industrial Revolution in both countries, because women simply had no choice but to leave their homes and enter the workforce. Horror stories of children being tied to bedposts all day while their mothers worked in factories became so common that the crèche was established in France in the mid 1800s. News of this arrangement spread to States soon thereafter.  In France this child care system was seen as a state investment in helping create responsible new members of society, and enabled mothers to participate in the workforce with confidence that their children were in good hands. 

In the U.S., however, born more out of necessity and continued for dubious reasons such as “Americanizing” the children of immigrants, child care never developed as an institution that could help socialize children into well-adjusted, independent and developmentally advanced individuals, as it did in other industrialized nations.

We do ourselves a disservice if we just think that this set of circumstances that conspire to disproportionately punish women in the workforce are happenstance. American day care is so dismal because the state has long seen the care of children outside of the home as inferior to a mother’s care—the proper place for a woman is in the home, tending to her children’s needs, so significant state subsidies have been nearly unimaginable for the majority of our country’s history. 

Let's not even deign to discuss the wild possibility that a father might also be considered a parent. When the government collects data on parents and work life balance, for instance, the mother is termed the "designated parent" and the father is a "childcare arrangement." Yes, you read that right. 

How might things have evolved differently in this country had our government established an agency that oversaw child care facilities, similar to the Mother and Infant Protection service that the French state formed after World War II? What might it take to convince our state that child care is a responsible investment, given the huge social benefits to not only children, but their working parents and the economy as a whole? 

I'm not quite sure what my husband and I would have done had we not had an amazing network of family to care for Desmond while we both worked full time. He really hates bedposts. 

Coconut milk for the win

This past weekend, as I enjoyed an outdoor concert in the area, a very pregnant lady handed me a little piece of heaven: the SO Delicious mini ice cream sandwich made with coconut milk. It was part of a promotion to share the merits of a vegan lifestyle and they handed out some literature with the treats.

Replacing what can often be pretty unexciting and stale vanilla ice cream with a creamy coconut milk-based faux ice cream is a thought conceived in heaven. I could easily imagine a similar dessert on one of Tom Collichio's plates, but of course his dish's slices of "bread" would be made with chocolate unicorn tears.

My father takes a bite out of his third sandwich 

As I skimmed the pamphlets that Prego McPrego handed me, I thought about how many times, in the process of working on this book, vegetarian and vegan women I know have mentioned that they are worrying about their diets during pregnancy. Sure enough, the literature in my hands addressed this.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is cited three times saying "a well-planned vegan diet is safe for all stages of the life-cyle including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence..." I want to be on board with this, because, again, I like the idea of women having enough information to make intelligent decisions about how they will handle their pregnancies.

But a vegetarian diet is decidedly different from a vegan diet.

One common nutritional concern during pregnancy is vitamin B-12 (cobalamin), and it is most commonly found in what vegans call "flesh foods"--or meat products. Here is the top 10 list of foods highest in B12. Yeah, vegans can't have any of it. And why do we care so much about B12 in particular? Well, for adults it's a pretty great nutrient whose effects range from protecting us against certain types of cancer to potentially reducing depression.

But, for babies in utero, it's pretty crucial. B12 is associated with a lot of the crucial development they need. Neural tubes, for instance. So one of the main concerns with a vegan diet is that vegan mother might suffer from B12 deficiency. One of the most common symptoms of which, by they way, is fatigue and loss of balance--nothing an already pregnant woman needs more of.

The AND endorsement of a vegan diet refers to the American Dietetics Association's position paper on vegetarian diets. In this paper, the ADA actually says that vegan mothers will have special needs and draws an important distinction between vegetarian and vegan diets. A "well-planned diet" for a vegan would consist of foods different from vegetarian diets, namely in its use of "fortified soy and rice beverages, some breakfast cereals and meat analogs, or Red Star Vegetarian Support Formula nutritional yeast [look for a post on this product in the future!]." Coconut milk beverages, to circle back to this elixir of the gods, can be enriched with B12 and a couple of cups can provide your daily nutritional requirement. Alternatively, a pregnant vegan would have to take a daily B12 supplement, not too different from the majority of pregnant women who take prenatal vitamins of some sort.

The position paper provides a pretty great summary of the research done on vegetarianism or veganism during pregnancy. Basically, vegetarians have it pretty easy--you can plan your diets to get enough B12, iron, folate and vitamin D. Vegans, however, have to be particularly diligent on getting the nutrients their baby needs. My take is that it is completely doable. Just do a little research, like the position paper in question.

Wheat and West Wing

It's been especially difficult for me to write this week. There are old tasks piling up, ongoing tasks continuing, and new tasks for which to wait with dread. But, when I don't feel motivated about political science, or forget why I chose this path, I watch the West Wing. I began watching this show while I was working in D.C., where once upon a time, I was the girl taking her LSAT and planning on making a difference by going down that very wide path of law school. Then I started loving the show, I started internalizing the characters' dilemmas, and I started agonizing about the show's topics long after the credits had run at the end of the hour.

And then I finally started exhibiting symptoms of the sickness calling addiction. I watched episode upon episode, sometimes with earphones on my laptop so I wouldn't disturb my roommate with the 6th episode of the night at 4am. I started lying to my then-boyfriend about other engagements, just to get some time alone to watch an episode. I stopped tasting my food properly; I'm serious about this one--I started eating quickly during commercial breaks, or stayed so engrossed in the dialogue that I'd chew mindlessly.

I decided at some point in that oddly dark stage that I wanted to study politics. I thought that maybe a Ph.D. would somehow get me closer to living the lives of the White House senior staff I'd grown very--fictitiously--attached to. I guess I didn't know how exactly to become them, but I thought a) you had to be smart to get there and b) it had to be hard get there. And I'd heard that you had to be smart to get a Ph.D. and it was hard to get a Ph.D., so maybe, just maybe, getting one might get me street cred with the other. (On a side note, I once met Bradley Whitford at a reception in D.C. and was frighteningly close to seeming like one of those cat ladies who thinks that soap operas are real--smooth, really.) Anyway, that's what I thought (and why I couldn't stay in D.C.) and now that I'm closer to getting the Ph.D. I'm realizing that it's not helping me get closer to that world at all. In fact, law probably would have been a better choice. Because while academics and lawyers can both be incredibly invested in being right, lawyers do it with a sense of urgency--at some point a lawyer could stop and say, we're going with what we've got because at some point you have make a decision to move on, rule a verdict, file charges, help people.

I think we've lost that sense of urgency in academia. I think long-tenured minds are often found out to pasture experimenting in left field because they realized that this gig is only good if you take advantage of getting paid to read and write about what you're really interested in. I think newly tenured-minds are still ailing from the competitiveness bug and trying to distinguish themselves so that when they go out to pasture, they've gone there with others' respect. I think young, non-tenured faculty are too scared trying to prove that they weren't an accidental hire that they're too scared or professionally obsessed to have any vision beyond the tenure track.

And there's a way that this all relates to the West Wing, after all. Because my husband, whom I met in this same Ph.D. program, is going to law school now. And I decided that I loved him during a West Wing marathon session, a binge relapse a few months into graduate school when I had some blinding side pain and my best friend from college, Be, came up to visit. We stayed indoors, me laying down on my couch, eating lots of fried food, and watched episode after episode of the big WW. It was during this session that I thought more about my now-husband-friend/then-just-friend and realized that he could have those discussions that they have on this show and--while it would definitely be a slower show because he's veeeeery careful with his words--the integrity would be the same. And I realized that I was glad he was going to law school, because more people who could have conversations like that needed to. So he's still new at it, but it looks like he's headed to D.C. already, and I'm really proud of him.

So I guess you could say that I fell in love my husband because he reminded me of my favorite television show. Sounds a little crazy when you say it like that, huh? Anyway, I know this is veering off into the personal, but I just watched a good episode of WW (another relapse, I'm afraid) and it made me sentimental. And if you've read this blog more than once, I figure you might be interested in some of the chaos behind the curtain.

Ah, and the connection to this blog is that it was the most recent episode of WW tonight that motivated me to finally return to this blog. I can't write a chapter I'm supposed to be revising and so I watched the WW. And in this episode, there was a great discussion on wheat and the miracle that it brought to India in the 1970s. I didn't know of this, but apparently the main problem with India's wheat levels originated from the inefficiency of a type of wheat whose stalk keeled over when it grew high. Now, that's mindboggling to me--that a whole country can be in famine because of a plant's particular relationship with water and the sun. But it's also amazing that India was brought out of famine, not by humanitarian aide and not because of charity, but because scientists by the names of Dr. M.S. Swaminathan and Dr. N.E. Borlaug discovered a type of wheat that would stay short, not fall over, and yield high amounts and this research stayed in India, enabling Indians, themselves, the ability to create wheat as a survival crop.

It's bittersweet to learn about these--what WW called--"miracles" because, on the one hand, it reminds me that politics can take a back seat to the fundamentals of scientific advancement and humanity; on the other hand, it really makes me angry about the state of science and politics today. The WW episode discussed the sale of affordable, generic HIV medications, but there's also stem cell research, drug rehabilitation, and health insurance... just to name a few.

I really wonder what our 'wheat miracle' would look like.

P.S. I was kidding when I said that's why I had to leave D.C.